Expanding on the thoughts in my last post, in her Washington Post column Megan McArdle says that Southwest’s problem is staffing:

How did it come to this? If I had to pick only one factor — one hole in the cheese — it would be staffing. That’s hardly Southwest’s only problem, but it’s probably the one problem that made all the others worse.

The operational efficiency and brand loyalty that made Southwest a case study were built on a foundation of human capital. You can’t run a finely tuned productivity machine with disgruntled, undertrained employees who are phoning it in; you need teams that work together well and solve problems on the fly. Southwest has long been known for its strong corporate culture; as Gary Leff of the indispensable View From the Wing blog told me, “Front-line people, from gate agents to flight attendants, at Southwest Airlines usually seem to like their jobs, which can be a contrast from other carriers.”

which has some resonance with one of the factors I cited in my post—generational shift. Old employees retired and the newer, younger ones didn’t know Southwest’s procedures and operations as well.

The editors of the Washington Post on the other hand blame Southwest’s management for failing to upgrade the company’s information technology infrastructure:

The core problem is Southwest’s failure to modernize its infrastructure. Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, told CNN the airline still uses phones and a computing system from three decades ago. While 1990s fashion might be back en vogue for teenagers, that era’s data processors should not be running one of the nation’s largest airlines in 2022. The system was unable to figure out where crews were, making it impossible to match up pilots, flight attendants and planes.

Those two explanations are not unrelated. A more experienced staff might have been compensating for deficits in the company’s IT and the newer staff might have been frustrated with the antiquated programs.

Here’s the “blame” part:

What’s particularly egregious is the fact that Southwest had the money to upgrade its systems but chose to hand it to shareholders instead. The airline recently announced it would pay a dividend again that amounts to $428 million a year. Southwest also received more than $7 billion from the U.S. federal government to shore up its operations during the pandemic. It paid a quarterly dividend for years before the coronavirus struck, signaling to Wall Street that the airline had cash to spare.

In other words, given a choice, Southwest put its investors ahead of its customers and crew. Now, the full ramifications of those decisions are causing massive pain — and what will almost certainly be a collapse of trust from the budget-minded travelers who have consistently ranked it among the best airlines when it comes to customer satisfaction.

I have no way of adjudicating among these explanations. I’m just passing them along.

I would point out that the entire air travel sector is notoriously slow to upgrade its IT. As late as the 1980s the air traffic system being used was one that had been developed in the 1960s, reliant on vacuum tube technology. American and United were still using systems they had developed 20 years previously. Maybe that has changed but I doubt it.

I suspect this is a topic we’ll be stewing about for some time. I have a question: what was the source of Southwest’s problems over the last week?

1. Inadequate investment in their flight scheduling systems
2. Outsourcing
3. Human error
4. Generational change
5. Bad weather
6. Bad luck

Without any insider knowledge my guess is that it was a combination of three or more of those factors.

I don’t think this will break Southwest but it’s certain to be a setback.

I think the two reports cited by Steve Milloy in his Wall Street Journal op-ed probably need more attention:

“Net zero” and its corollary, the “energy transition,” are talked about so often and so loosely that many take them for granted as worthy goals that could be accomplished with greater buy-in from political and business leaders. But two new reports from the utility industry should put an end to such loose talk.

In September, the Electric Power Research Institute, the research arm of the U.S. electric utility industry, released a report titled “Net-Zero 2050: U.S. Economy-Wide Deep Decarbonization Scenario Analysis.”

The EPRI report concludes that the utility industry can’t attain net zero. “This study shows that clean electricity plus direct electrification and efficiency . . . are not sufficient by themselves to achieve net-zero economy-wide emissions.”

In other words, no amount of wind turbines, solar panels, hydropower, nuclear power, battery power, electrification of fossil-fuel technologies or energy-efficiency technologies will get us to net zero by 2050.

Even to achieve “deep decarbonization”—which isn’t net zero—by 2050, EPRI says, “a broad portfolio of options that includes low-carbon fuels and carbon removal technologies will be required.”

But “low-carbon fuels”—efficient biofuels—don’t exist. “Carbon removal technologies” aren’t possible to scale up, and if they were, it would cost about $1 quadrillion—a million billion dollars—at today’s prices to remove the 1.6 trillion tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide that U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said needs to be sucked “out of the atmosphere even after we get to net zero.”

There’s more. The EPRI report states: “This study does not include a detailed assessment of factors such as supply chain constraints [and] operational reliability and resiliency” of a net-zero electricity grid.

How a net-zero grid could be built and function would be an issue worth studying if it were possible in the first place. But it simply isn’t.

So, barring some unforeseen miracle technology, “net zero by 2050” won’t happen.

The curious thing about the report is that it has largely remained an EPRI secret. There has been no media coverage of it. I found out about it only after I filed a shareholder proposal about net zero with the electric utility Alliant Energy. The company offered the report as a defense against my proposal that management explain how it planned to reach its goal of net zero by 2050.

The other recent report is “2022 Long-Term Reliability Assessment” from the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a government-certified grid-reliability and standard-setting group. NERC concluded that fossil-fuel plants are being removed from the grid too fast to meet continuing electricity demand, and that is putting most of the country at risk of grid failure and blackouts during extreme weather. The U.S. just got another taste of this during the Christmas electric-grid emergency.

So there you have it: We are dangerously dismantling our electric grid while burdening it with more demand in hope of attaining the goal of “net zero by 2050,” which the utility industry has admitted is a fantasy.

In that context it’s probably worth taking note of Akio Toyoda’s recent remarks:

Toyota Motor Corp. President Akio Toyoda said he is among the auto industry’s silent majority in questioning whether electric vehicles should be pursued exclusively, comments that reflect a growing uneasiness about how quickly car companies can transition.

Auto makers are making big bets on fully electric vehicles, investments that have been bolstered by robust demand for the limited numbers of models that are now available.

Still, challenges are mounting—particularly in securing parts and raw materials for batteries—and concerns have emerged in some pockets of the car business about the speed to which buyers will make the shift, especially as EV prices have soared this year.

“People involved in the auto industry are largely a silent majority,” Mr. Toyoda said to reporters during a visit to Thailand. “That silent majority is wondering whether EVs are really OK to have as a single option. But they think it’s the trend so they can’t speak out loudly.”

While major rivals, including General Motors Co. and Honda Motor Co., have set dates for when their lineups will be all-EV, Toyota has stuck to a strategy of investing in a diverse lineup of vehicles that includes hydrogen-powered cars and hybrids, which combine batteries with gas engines.

The world’s biggest auto maker has said it sees hybrids, a technology it invented with the debut of the Toyota Prius in the 1990s, as an important option when EVs remain expensive and charging infrastructure is still being built out in many parts of the world. It is also developing zero-emission vehicles powered by hydrogen.

“Because the right answer is still unclear, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to just one option,” Mr. Toyoda said. Over the past few years, Mr. Toyoda said, he has tried to convey this point to industry stakeholders, including government officials—an effort he described as tiring at times.

In the past I’ve pointed out that in general technological progress does not proceed at a predictable rate, Moore’s Law notwithstanding. I do have one question for those who believe we can rely on rapid technological progress to make what is impossible now possible in ten or twenty years. If that’s the case why do anything at all about anthropogenic climate change? Why won’t technological progress solve the problem for us without adopting our adopting electric vehicles or increasing our utilization of solar and wind power? And how do you know that?

I find the breastbeating and bloviation about some guy in New York getting elected to Congress who ran on a passel of lies incredibly tedious. I am shocked, shocked to hear about politicians lying. I could probably fill this page with jokes about politicians lying going back 200 or more years.

The only thing about it I find engaging is that I will find it interesting if New York Democrats find a way of criminalizing lying in politics. Stay tuned.

I avoided commenting on the USA Today clickbait article on the perfect president but I see that James Joyner took the bait. He remarks:

Far and away the most likely winner of the 2024 election will be an almost-82-year-old man from the Mid-Atlantic states with no business or military background but plenty of experience in the Senate and White House. This, despite polling saying 6 in 10 don’t want either him or the other guy to run.

Qualities among which people chose included age, gender, government, business and military experience, willingness to compromise, home state, and so on.

IMO a more useful approach would include something like what’s called the MoSCoW standard:

Must have
Should have
Could have
Will not have

So, for example, I think that candidates younger than 50 or older than 70 are “could haves” but not “should haves” or “must haves”. I think that executive government and business experience are “must haves” while military experience is a “could have”. A woman as president is a “could have” but neither a “should have” nor a “must have”. I think that being from a “purple state” is a “should have” but practically impossible given the present state of politics. Politicians from states solidly red or blue have very damaging reflexes.

I genuinely wish that more people actually read, understood, and appreciated the constitutional role of president (commander-in-chief of the military, chief executive of the federal government, etc.).

One a slightly divergent subject I think that anyone for whom either government or business experience is a “will not have” is not old enough to vote.

In his Wall Street Journal column William McGurn laments the departure of Title 42 (the provision that allows/requires the Border Patrol to turn asylum seekers away at the border), declaiming:

Ultimately, immigration is the responsibility of Congress, and the dysfunctions now on view daily at our southern border—legal, political, humanitarian—owe themselves to the repeated failure of our legislators to put a responsible immigration infrastructure in place.

But Congress doesn’t really lead. A president does. In his zeal to do the opposite of everything Donald Trump did, President Biden quickly transformed the border into a full-fledged crisis. One example of something he threw out while putting nothing in its place: the remain in Mexico policy, which sent asylum seekers who’d unlawfully entered the U.S. back to Mexico while they waited for their asylum hearings.

But Mr. Biden’s border difficulty isn’t that he can’t get his agenda through. His problem is he has no agenda. The administration’s argument to the Supreme Court was that it wants Title 42 gone—just not yet. The whole thing is a fraud, driven home to the American people every time they hear White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre cheerily assert that the border isn’t open when everyone in the world, especially the thousands crossing each day, can see that it is.

concluding:

Still, Mr. Biden styles himself a transformational president. His best shot here would be a bipartisan immigration deal that eluded both his Republican and Democratic predecessors. This would require identifying his priorities (e.g., resolving the legal status of the two million so-called Dreamers, people who were brought here as children), making Republicans an offer they would have a hard time refusing—and then going on to sell it to Congress and the American people.

Mr. Biden, alas, shows little sign he is capable of such presidential leadership. For one thing, he would have to offer Republicans something real. Border security was conspicuously absent from the immigration reform he unveiled at the outset of his term, reducing the proposal to cheap virtue-signaling.

Selling a deal would also challenge Mr. Biden. Recently he’s treated prime-time presidential addresses to the nation as opportunities to take swipes at his predecessor or characterize anyone who disagrees with him as morally defective. But were he for once able to rise above himself, he would win whatever the outcome: Either he would succeed in getting an immigration reform where his predecessors failed, or he would win politically by showing that Republicans are the obstacle to improving security at the border.

However, President Biden has been saved or, at least, granted a reprieve by the Supreme Court as the AP reports:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is keeping pandemic-era limits on asylum in place for now, dashing hopes of migrants who have been fleeing violence and inequality in Latin America and elsewhere to reach the United States. Tuesday’s ruling preserves a major Trump-era policy that was scheduled to expire under a judge’s order on Dec. 21. The case will be argued in February and a stay imposed last week by Chief Justice John Roberts will remain in place until the justices make a decision. The limits, often known as Title 42 in reference to a 1944 public health law, were put in place under then-President Donald Trump at the beginning of the pandemic, but unwinding it has taken a torturous route through the courts.

That’s practically an ideal outcome for President Biden. He can blame Republicans, blame the Supreme Court, and point out the urgent need to re-elected him so he can appoint more progressive justices even as the limits remain in place which insulates him from accountability for an additional rush at the border had Title 42 been removed.

Despite a national bipartisan consensus on the fate of DACA beneficiaries, immigration law reform remains out of reach for rather simple reasons. Congressional progressives reject any reform which does not include EVERYONE, not just DACA beneficiaries, while Republicans reject anything that could be labeled as “amnesty”. It’s the new law of the excluded middle—the middle is excluded.

Before I leave this subject I wanted to remark on the claim you frequently encounter from Hamiltonians, libertarians, and progressives that we need more immigrants.

Imagine just for the sake of argument that there is a business that has built a successful business by buying quarters at a penny apiece. They can sell them at 20 cents a piece and make a tidy profit. When they can no longer buy quarters for a penny apiece and must actually pay 25 cents for them, it wrecks their business. No one will buy quarters for more than 25 cents apiece.

The problem is not that they need more quarters. Their problem is a flawed business model.

That’s pretty much the situation with fast food, hospitality, and construction. They’ve come to depend on a continuous, reliable flow of unskilled and low-skilled workers. Fast food is the most egregious. Fast food franchises came to prominence in the late 1950s-early 1960s which, coincidentally, was just when the oldest Baby Boomers were coming into the entry level workforce, a phenomenon that was essentially unprecedented. The franchises needed that stream of entry level workers. When our immigration laws were reformed in 1965 it coincidentally kept the spigot of entry level workers opened.

The problem is that what was completely workable for young entry level workers who didn’t expect those jobs to support families is not workable for immigrant workers who do expect to be able to support families. Add that the things on which additional workers depend (healthcare, education, housing, safety, etc.) are the very things whose costs have grown the most over the last 40 years and you have an unsustainable mess. The courts tell us we must provide those things for immigrants regardless of ability to pay, there’s no conceivable way they can pay for them on the wages they earn, and, to raise their wages so they could afford to pay you’d need to raise the prices of what they’re producing beyond the willingness to pay.

Those are the foundations of the impasse at which we find ourselves.

Henry Kissinger has proposed some steps for preventing World War III in a piece at The Spectator. Here’s the kernel:

Ukraine has become a major state in Central Europe for the first time in modern history. Aided by its allies and inspired by its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine has stymied the Russian conventional forces which have been overhanging Europe since World War Two. And the international system — including China — is opposing Russia’s threat or use of its nuclear weapons.

This process has mooted the original issues regarding Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Ukraine has acquired one of the largest and most effective land armies in Europe, equipped by America and its allies. A peace process should link Ukraine to NATO, however expressed. The alternative of neutrality is no longer meaningful, especially after Finland and Sweden joined NATO. This is why, in May, I recommended establishing a ceasefire line along the borders existing where the war started on February 24. Russia would disgorge its conquests thence, but not the territory it occupied nearly a decade ago, including Crimea. That territory could be the subject of a negotiation after a ceasefire.

If the pre-war dividing line between Ukraine and Russia cannot be achieved by combat or by negotiation, recourse to the principle of self-determination could be explored. Internationally supervised referendums concerning self-determination could be applied to particularly divisive territories which have changed hands repeatedly over the centuries.

The goal of a peace process would be twofold: to confirm the freedom of Ukraine and to define a new international structure, especially for Central and Eastern Europe. Eventually Russia should find a place in such an order.

The preferred outcome for some is a Russia rendered impotent by the war. I disagree. For all its propensity to violence, Russia has made decisive contributions to the global equilibrium and to the balance of power for over half a millennium. Its historical role should not be degraded. Russia’s military setbacks have not eliminated its global nuclear reach, enabling it to threaten escalation in Ukraine. Even if this capability is diminished, the dissolution of Russia or destroying its ability for strategic policy could turn its territory encompassing eleven time zones into a contested vacuum. Its competing societies might decide to settle their disputes by violence. Other countries might seek to expand their claims by force. All these dangers would be compounded by the presence of thousands of nuclear weapons which make Russia one of the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

concluding:

The quest for peace and order has two components that are sometimes treated as contradictory: the pursuit of elements of security and the requirement for acts of reconciliation. If we cannot achieve both, we will not be able to reach either. The road of diplomacy may appear complicated and frustrating. But progress to it requires both the vision and the courage to undertake the journey.

At present the first aspect of his proposal (a Ukraine that is a member of NATO) is unacceptable to Russia and the second part (leaving Crimea in Russian hands) unacceptable to Ukraine. Sounds like an impasse to me.

One thing we should keep in mind. We can replace munitions expended by Ukraine in the conflict. We can give them more weapons. We can not replenish the Ukrainians lost and we have no idea how many of those there are. At least 15% of Ukraine’s population has already left the country. How many will wish to return?

At The Hill Carl Schramm remarks on a report from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, chaired by Michigan’s Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, on the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) performance during the COVID-19 pandemic:

Despite being in the spotlight, the CDC has yet to demonstrate any improvement in stopping recurring waves of COVID, nor has it generated confidence that it can prevent either monkeypox or RSV. Worse, there is concern that mRNA vaccines may be tied to fatal adverse effects. If so, the question of why the Food and Drug Administration and CDC did not require randomized clinical trials for the most recent COVID boosters to establish safety will be hard to avoid.

Thankfully, an extraordinary effort by Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who chairs the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, may have provided the nation with the next best thing to a commission report. Last week, committee staff delivered a remarkably comprehensive report, 242 pages long, on the government’s response to COVID-19. Its title gives up the game: “Historically Unprepared.”

This is the kernel of the piece:

Peters, a Democrat, is hard on President Trump. The president’s daily commentary offered little comfort and, more than once, useless, even dangerous, advice. Consider, however, the president was bound to rely on the CDC, an agency that consistently failed to provide him or the public with timely and accurate advice on the nature of the virus or steps that might contain its spread. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s official spokesperson, promoted a constantly changing list of largely ineffective actions. Sanitizing grocery carts did not slow COVID’s spread and some studies say social distancing didn’t help and masking with up to three masks(!) might not have either.

The linked articles on social distancing and masking are interesting, the latter in particular. It could be summarized: “they couldn’t hurt” which is roughly my view. The studies on which the article reliess have a basic flaw: comparing Italy, France, and the United States (which did not adopt masks early on) with China, South Korea, and Japan (which did) does not disaggregate the effectiveness of masks from the heightened immunity due to prior exposure to similar viruses.

I think this passage should be underscored:

Without fundamental reform, it is a leap of faith to believe that the CDC can do a better job with more resources. Peters’ report recalls that past heads of the agency failed to take even the basic steps necessary to have checked the spread of COVID, despite explicit recommendations by previous review panels. Political appointees seldom prove equal to the task of reforming their agencies. Tenured underlings know how to wait them out.

The CDC doesn’t need more money. We need civil service reform, governmental reorganization, and a greater consciousness of the realities of bureaucracies, especially that in a bureaucracy those who are dedicated to the organization itself inevitably gain ascendancy over those who are dedicated to the notional goals of the organization.

I feel I should add that I am less sanguine about the private sector than the author for a simple reason: the federal government likes to deal with big companies and the bureaucracies in big companies have the same issues as those in the federal government.

I thought you might find this statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China interesting as I did. I don’t actually have much to say about it other than that I found this passage interesting:

Third, we have followed an open regionalism to build a stable and prosperous Asian home together.

I wonder if that’s how Japan, South Korea, Philippines, and India see it?